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Loads. Most folk will know if they’ve held a season ticket in this and the previous two seasons (though with the Covid affected season even that isn’t clear). But the Trust has been so inactive since 2019, not holding regular and expected elections, and it always used to rely on the Club emailing anything they wanted to say to the beneficiaries. Join the whole room of floor adjacent jaws accumulated from explaining this story to outsiders. Theoretically it could distribute dividends to beneficiaries, or distribute the proceeds of selling the shares to the beneficiaries. If it actually knew who they were! f**k that Mon eh Jags.

As someone who has been interviewed by James Cairney in this saga, I resemble that remark!

Simply put, no. The five trustees currently in post were hand-picked by the football agent Stewart MacGregor, working together with senior figures on the Club Board. The organisation has existed since 2015, and has held only one set of elections (in 2018). From November 2019 onwards, it has operated with precisely zero elected fan representatives. Under their current proposals, unelected trustees will continue to be in the majority until at least summer 2024, and the trustee group will not be fully elected until at least summer 2025. None of the unelected trustees are being put up for election in their first set of elections (which may or may not take place). The Trust deed has been varied several times to circumvent the requirement to hold elections following changes in personnel. The beneficiaries of the trust (season ticket-holders of three years standing) have no meaningful legal or democratic rights under the trust deed, because the trustees can routinely overrule them. The Trust doesn't even know how many beneficiaries it has, let alone who they are, because of a GDPR problem. Compare and contrast with The Jags Foundation, a conventional supporters' association with over 930 members, substantial proven fundraising capacity, a fully elected board, and one of the most prominent engagement strategies in Scottish football. Who were overlooked for the share transfer, pretty much, because they wanted to be able to hold the Club Board to account for trivial things like, oh I don't know, losing £215k in the last financial year.

It should be remembered that Gerry Britton: (a) prepared and presented in April and May 2022 a written proposal “on behalf of” the Club Board for discussion at a trustees meeting (b) that led to the original “note of interest” mentioned in the Three Black Cats statement made on the Club website in late May, a few days before the TJF elections had wrapped up (c) he and all bar one of the then trustees then met several times with the group who eventually became the new trustees to discuss and iterate on a proposal (d) as one of five trustees at the time, Gerry Britton had to agree to the appointment of the new trustees by variation of the trust deed (e) he will have then been at the Club Board meetings where it was discussed whether to approve the share transfer following a request from Three Black Cats to transfer its shares to the PTFC Trust Remember all of this when he tries to give the impression that he was not involved in the decision making process.

They just don't get it. Every time the PTFC Trust make a statement, The Jags Foundation sees a bump in its membership. Every. Single. Time. They fundamentally seem not to understand why it is that the fans feel the need to protest in the first place. It's really pretty galling to see precisely the people who divided the support, by going behind everyone's backs, thwarting fan ownership, refusing to democratise, failing to engage with the fans for three months after being appointed, voting to re-appoint the Club directors en-masse, then turn around and tell other people that they have responsibility for uniting the fan base. The most unifying thing two things that could happen at our football club right now would be Club Board resignations and a full set of Trustee elections.

Never underestimate the power of football fans and their ability to affect change through protest, pressure, and if necessary their wallets and the law. The European Superleague was a done deal until it wasn’t. The same with the abuse of power by owners at Cardiff City. If the Club and Trust show no willingness to work with TJF then they are spitting in the faces of more than 900 of their customers. A business like Partick Thistle can either respect its customers or find itself very quickly out of business. If you think the fans should sit back and take this contemptuous treatment, fair enough. But more than 900 of us think a proper fan owned club is worth fighting for. And the only way we get to that outcome is to make clear we will make life very bloody difficult for them if they don’t change their act.

While the main membership rate is £10 per month there is also a £5 per month concessionary option and an introductory rate of £1 per month valid for the first 12 months. In terms of the positive reasons to join TJF I would emphasise the following: (a) we are the largest members organisation the Thistle support has ever pulled together (b) our capacity to fundraise significantly outstrips any other Thistle fan body (we bring in about £85k annualised equivalent in membership subs, donations and Thistle Pins) (c) we advocate, very publicly and relentlessly, a form of fan ownership that would give the fans genuine influence over the really important decisions affecting the future of our club (d) we bring together Thistle fans in contexts other than just Firhill to enjoy each other’s company and to build a stronger Jags community both in and around Glasgow and further afield (e) we help other parts of the Jags community financially and through raising their profile. We made a substantial donation to Jags For Good’s Winter Energy Fund and have sponsored two Thistle Women’s games this season, encouraging our members to try out games at Petershill. (f) we are genuinely engaged with the Thistle support: we proactively seek our members’ views, listen to those of all Thistle fans, living our values of democracy and accountability (g) we do our bit to educate and inform Thistle fans about the fundamentals of the club they support. Fan ownership is about a culture of responsibility and for the fans to make a success of it, they need to understand how the club is run and funded, and what the key challenges are (h) uniting the Thistle support in the medium term will only be possible if the Club and Trust reach out an olive branch to TJF and actually offer something serious we can all work for. The more members TJF has, the clearer it will be that’s what the Club and Trust will have to do, and the sooner that might happen.

Had a good chat with him in the pie queue at the Dundee game. Nothing sinister just been on a holiday.

It may or may not have been mentioned to them at the face-to-face meeting that TJF pays zero pounds zero pence for its PR/communications strategy, and it's worked out just fine.

Thanks for your support Tdn. We really appreciate it.

No complaints here. Our defence was diabolical. You thoroughly deserved the win.

We think there is possibly a VAT anomaly inflating both figures.

As I understand it, it is technically a permissible form of accounting for land and buildings, but it has severe limitations. It’s not a viable basis for commercial lending, for example. I looked at a handful of Scottish Clubs’ last set of accounts last night and I couldn’t find one, where this method of accounting was used for their fixed assets (at least in relation to a stadium). Edit to add: as I understand it, Hibs used it in 2014 to revalue Easter Road. But this was at a time when construction costs weren’t utterly crazy, and subsequent accounts work on the basis that the asset will depreciate year on year. By carrying out the revaluation specifically now, the Club has very possibly picked it at its absolute peak. This is because if material costs are higher, the replacement method would say the ground is more valuable (which is a nonsense). If iron becomes more expensive to procure, the stadium becomes more valuable on the rationale that “a replacement stadium would need iron and that would cost more” and vice versa. There is now an incentive not to revalue the stadium for as long as possible, because when construction costs settle down, it would lead to the asset being worth less, paradoxically, because it’s less expensive to replace!

Revaluation of the land/stadium based on what it would cost to provide a modern like-for-like replacement. Original valuation based on the open market value. This explains the £7.8 million discrepancy. The value of the assets hasn’t increased from £5 million to £14.3 million; £7.8 million is attributable to the “book” value being calculated differently. Absolutely no lender would let you borrow on the basis of such a valuation. Absolutely no one would pay that for the land and buildings on it. City End and Main Stand represents £1.7 million donation to the Club by 3BC. Strip out the PropCo tidy-up, and the wild revaluation, and the Club lost £215k last season, despite receiving money from Queen’s Park for ground-sharing. Turnover is down £190k versus the 2019-20 season, when we were last in this league. The accounts, by their very nature, do not disclose whether or to what extent 3BC made financial commitments to the Club by other means (e.g. that might be covered by the turnover or operating income items). We know for a fact that 3BC committed £560k to its only subsidiary (the Club) in 2020-21 because it says so in their own accounts. Cash in the bank was down £300k, but debtors is up £360k (we’re not yet 100% sure why this is so high) or so and creditors are up £280k or so. The eagle-eyed among you will see this shakes out to a worsening situation of £220k, i.e. the operating loss, give or take. If the Club were to sustain operating losses in the same region for the next two financial years as it has in 2021-22, it would begin to encounter cashflow issues. This would probably mean, in practice, having to ask for an overdraft facility again, after years of having been debt free. If we can get to the bottom of why debtors is so high, that might provide more of a buffer, but realistically no more than a further year or so.

Something that various of Thistle’s custodians seem repeatedly just not to “get” is that people will respect difficult and controversial decisions, even if they vehemently disagree with them, if you’re just open, honest and timely in the way you communicate it.

Try using Incognito Browsing.

Last week a couple of TJF directors had a chat with James Cairney at The Herald/Glasgow Times. We took the opportunity to set the record straight on a couple of issues , as well as to set out some of our thoughts on a constructive way forward for PTFC and the Foundation. First half is here: https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/sport/23020811.jags-foundation-interview-part-proposals-social-media-missing-shares/ Second half is here: https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/sport/23020816.jags-foundation-interview-part-ii-fundraising-sponsors-future/

Glorious.

They still can’t tell us how much money Three Black Cats put into the Club in the financial years 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22. They could only answer that question if they were specifically given the answer or, for the most recent financial year, if the management accounts examined covered that period. Without knowing that information it’s completely meaningless to say we are at break even based on the audited accounts: they don’t and cannot tell you about those specific income sources. They can tell you what the Covid-related support is (as it was itemised separately from operating income). But you’d be left making educated guesses at best about how credible this year’s budget was because you wouldn’t have a detailed comparison to put it up against.

The Executor is Murray Beith Murray. One of the two Directors of Three Black Cats is… Murray Beith Murray. The firm Peter Shand works for. He was in the “negotiations” with the interested parties.

It's not quite as straightforward as that. Operational decisions about policing are made routinely between the footballing authorities and the police directly, rather than with political involvement, just as they are with any major organised public events. It seems as though, despite the long-standing preparations for this national event, they were caught a bit on the hop by the timing. It strikes me as a bit daft that games with lower attendance (like the PTWFC game TJF were sponsoring that was supposed to take place today) were postponed too, but at short notice it may have been thought easier just to postpone the lot for this weekend. Speaking purely personally, I hope the game against Cove on Saturday can go ahead. I'm sure the Club also hopes this too, given how long a gap it would otherwise leave between home fixtures. But I'm sceptical that either the SPFL or Police Scotland, the key decision-makers in that respect, will pay any heed to supporters' associations calling for the games to go ahead. The matches will either happen because (a) the police have got their shit together and (b) football doesn't want to look silly for not going ahead while other major events do or they won't happen because either or both (a) and (b) don't materialise. ETA: something that's Scottish specific here is that the additional policing requirements in Edinburgh this week would not have been needed had the Queen passed at Windsor or one of her English residencies. As I understand it, for example, there will be a significantly elevated armed police presence in Edinburgh over the next few days, which will disrupt several businesses in the vicinity of the City Centre.

Decisions about the postponement of fixtures has been for the SPFL. My understanding is that policing capacity may have played a part in the decision.

You're asking whether it crossed the minds of the TJF Board to make a statement about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the Foundation, Partick Thistle or Scottish football? Not for even a fraction of a second. You are literally the first and only person I've encountered who even seems to think we should have considered it.

I think you’ve answered your own question.

Wah wah wah. Get relegated.